


all this, and love too, will ruin us

by theinvisibledisaster



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 6000 years if we're getting precise about it, Almost No Conflict Whatsoever, Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, Bellamy as Aziraphale, Clarke as Crowley, Don't Examine This Too Closely, F/M, Good Omens AU, Historical References, Jane Austen Levels of Pining, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, except for Armageddon obviously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-09-27 12:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisibledisaster/pseuds/theinvisibledisaster
Summary: Clarke really didn't mean to fall for the stupid angel.Bellamy knows he shouldn't be doey-eyed for a demon.Armageddon and babysitting the antichrist really don't help things.





	1. (not so much falling as) Sauntering Vaguely Downwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clarke, the first demon on Earth, falls in love with an angel, and gets really QUITE annoyed about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops i tripped and my love for The 100 and Good Omens both fell out and got mixed together. oh well, guess we're stuck with this now. 
> 
> what do you mean i already have five other half-published wips on ao3? don't look at me, i'm so ashamed. but that's not gonna stop me posting a new one! SO HERE YOU GO BITCHES! I HOPE YOU'RE READY FOR A 6K YEAR SLOW BURN WITH SOME SNARK!!
> 
> for reference:
> 
> Clarke - Crowley  
Bellamy - Aziraphale
> 
> Cain - Murphy
> 
> The Antichrist - Madi
> 
> and i'm not changing the demons' names, just because that's so much work, but i've decided that they roughly correspond to a different t100 character each, and those characters are:  
Hastur - Echo  
Ligur - McCreary  
Dagon - Ontari  
Beelzebub - Sheidheda

_In the question, you're the why,_  
_ In the ointment, you're the fly._  
_ Though I know some things are indispensable,_  
_ Like a buck or two,_  
_ If there's one thing I can do without,_  
_ I can do without you!_

_In the barrel, you're a pickle,_  
_ In the gold mine, you're a nickel._  
_ You're the tack inside my shoe._  
_ Yeah, I can do without you!_  
\- Calamity Jane, I Can Do Without You

** _2020AD, Polis Air Base, The End Times_ **

She’d never even meant to fall for the stupid angel, and now here she was, risking her entire being for him. She supposed she should be used to falling by now, what with being a demon and all, but as she kept reminding the angel, she never meant to fall in the first place, just to poke around a bit.

“Clarke if you don’t think of something, I’ll…” the angel stared into her eyes with some degree of panic, which she supposed was fair given the circumstances. “I’ll never speak to you again.”

Aw, hell.

She flicked her wrists, putting in every ounce of energy she had left, and time swirled to a stop, until it was only the three of them left moving. The area around them stayed completely still, although the angel’s hair seemed to be dusted by some non-existent breeze.

“Angels.” She muttered under her breath, right as her legs gave out and she collapsed into his side.

His arms came up to circle her waist, holding her steady, and she refused to acknowledge how nice it felt. She didn’t do nice. She was a demon.

“Clarke? You alright?” He asked, lips practically pressed against her ear.

Armageddon was a really bad time for her to be getting distracted like this.

* * *

_“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._  
_These, our bodies, possessed by light._  
_Tell me we'll never get used to it.”_  
― Richard Siken, Crush

** _4004BC, roughly 6000 years earlier_ **

It had all started outside the wall, watching Adam and Eve sprinting off out into the wide world. She’d been a little proud of herself for influencing them all the way out of the Garden - she’d only been intending to explain to them why living in ignorance wasn’t healthy, and they’d really taken that idea and run with it.

Quite literally.

There were rain clouds on the horizon - the first ones ever - and the air smelled wonderful on her forked tongue.

She slithered across the ground until she came across a pair of sandalled feet. Glancing up, she could see a mess of dark curls above a white robe, and whatever it was smelled distinctly of Celestial Pompousness.

She transfigured into a more human form, tipping her head at him in greeting. “Angel.”

Ah, from this angle he was a lot more recognisable - it was the angel who’d been guarding the Garden, all chiselled angelic beauty and warm brown eyes. One could get lost in those eyes, if they weren’t careful. She stared at his muscular shoulders instead. She was allowed to lust after an angel, right? It was definitely a sin, although probably not an acceptable one to the downstairs bosses. She didn’t much care.

He glared across at her, arms crossed. “So you’re the demon that showed them the tree.”

“You sound a lot less impressed than you should be,” she remarked, tossing an apple in the air and catching it in her other hand. “I just outwitted God.”

He bristled, turning back to watch the two humans stumbling towards the future. “Unless She wanted it that way.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Maybe She wanted them to leave the Garden.”

For a moment, she considered it, but soon dismissed the idea. “She’d hardly let a demon get the credit for that, would She?”

He made a face, but didn’t respond, and she observed him for a moment, thoughtful.

He turned to her, exasperated. _“What?”_

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?”

“Uh.”

“I’m sure that the last time I saw you, you were holding a sword, fire and brimstone, that sort of thing. Where is it?”

He sighed heavily, glancing at her with something like guilt. “I gave it to Eve.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Not Adam?”

“She’s pregnant, she needs the close protection - Adam can attack things with his whole body, she can’t.” He frowned over at her. “You’re not going to ask me_ why_ I gave them an angelic sword?”

“I was assuming She told you to. Are you telling me she _didn’t?_ You _chose_ to give away your angelic weapon?” Her eyes widened and she stepped closer. “That’s a fall-able offence, you know.”

He looked a little green all of a sudden, and she decided she liked this angel very much, despite her better judgement. He had a mind of his own, and he looked like a Greek statue - or he would, whenever those would be invented - and he seemed kind, she could feel it. Of course, Angels tended to be _nice_ by default, but kindness was a choice. Kindness was always a choice.

“But I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she amended quickly. “Just tell the other Angels that it was Her desire.”

“I’m not going to _lie_.” He scoffed.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, fall then, I don’t care. But it’s not exactly fun and games down there. Beelzebub can be a real dick. And you probably shouldn’t even _look_ at Satan.”

“What about you? What if you did the _right_ thing by nudging the humans from the Garden? Does that mean you get an all access pass back to Heaven?”

“God I hope not.” She hissed, scales beginning to climb up her arms defensively before she calmed down and they faded back beneath her skin. “All I got up there was judgement and misery. Besides, once you fall, you can’t un-fall. You just… exist.”

“That’s bullshit.” He said. “It shouldn’t work like that.”

“Careful - don’t say those things where She can hear.” She smirked at his fearful glance towards the sky, seemingly expected to be smited where he stood. When nothing happened, he relaxed slightly and turned to look at her. Like really, actually _look._ It was a little unnerving, actually. “What?”

“What’s your name?” Well, that wasn’t what she was expecting.

She could already taste the word on her tongue, and she didn’t like it, but she said it anyway. “Wanheda.”

“Doesn’t that mean-”

“-Princess of Death. Yeah. I don’t like to talk about it, and I don’t do that anymore anyway. I asked to be reassigned; that’s how I ended up here - they told me to just get up and stir up trouble. Indefinitely.”

“Oh.”

_“Oh?”_

“Nothing, it’s just… I’m gonna be here indefinitely too. So I guess we’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other.”

She laughed, already beginning to transform back into a snake, blue-green eyes getting larger as the scales flickered into existence. “Don’t count on it, Angel.”

She had slithered halfway across the wall before she heard him call out, “My name’s Bellamy, by the way.”

The word sounded like music and felt like the sun sinking into her cool blood and warming her from the inside out. She definitely didn’t want to think about what that meant.

* * *

_“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”_  
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo 

** _4001BC, somewhere in the wide desert_ **

“He just _murdered_ his brother.”

“Well, his brother _was_ being pretty obnoxious about the whole ‘in God’s favour’ thing.” She pointed out.

Bellamy looked over at her, horrified. “So you’re condoning _murder?”_

“Demon.” She reminded him, pointing at herself. “And I’m not condoning it, I’m just saying that I get it. Being slighted hurts. Being slighted by the Almighty? Nothing hurts worse.”

For a moment, it looked like Bellamy might ask her about it, or even say something comforting, but the moment passed and she breathed a sigh of relief. Cain spotted them and strode over, all resentful confidence.

“Which one of you is the angel?” He asked, sounding bored.

“How dare you.” They said in unison.

She jerked her thumb at Bellamy. Cain nodded in thanks and stood in front of him. “Apparently you’re supposed to mark me with something.”

Bellamy rested a hand on his forearm and it started glowing white and blue.

“What’s with the eyes?” Cain asked, squinting at her. “Do all demons have those?”

“No, just me. I’m a snake.” She said bluntly, flicking a forked tongue out at him for emphasis.

He looked semi-impressed, still intrigued by her blue-green snake eyes that always looked too bright, even in the harsh light of the desert. She miracled up some sunglasses to hide them from view, just to stop him from staring, and he smirked at her. Bellamy lifted his hand, and when he took it away, there was a twisted symbol burned into the skin. Cain observed it, then flashed his teeth.

“Thanks. See you around, Pretty Boy. You too, Demon Girl.”

After he was suitably out of earshot, halfway up a sand dune, she huffed. “Why do you get called pretty and I’m just a demon?”

Bellamy clicked his tongue at her sympathetically. “You’re very pretty, Princess.”

_“Princess?”_

“You said you didn’t like Wanheda.”

“No I didn’t, I said I didn’t like to talk about it.” She was kind of freaked out that he knew something like that about her without her telling him, but then she supposed that Angels were designed to be emotionally intuitive. Didn’t mean she had to like it though.

“Would you rather I called you-”

“-no.”

He looked like he was fighting a smile. She wanted to punch him. She also wanted to kiss him. Those two impulses happened a lot when he was around, but she chalked it up to the physical attractiveness thing coupled with the self-righteous angel thing - it definitely had nothing to do with the fact that she was beginning to really like spending time with him.

At all.

“So what did you do to the fratricidal maniac?” She asked, to cover the mixed emotions he would definitely be able to feel.

He shook his head, the smile getting wider. “You’re so not funny.”

“Stop smiling then.” She retorted, grinning. “And stop avoiding the question.”

“It’s so that no-one can ever kill him.” At her confused look, he continued. “It’s an eye for an eye type thing - he claimed anyone who saw him would kill him for what he’d done and She decided his punishment would be to walk the world as a lonely traveller, unable to die. He has to meet people and grow to care about them and then watch them wither and die while he lives on, and anyone who tries to kill him will suffer. I believe the exact wording was _sevenfold vengeance_, so basically he can’t die.”

“Cursed with Eternal Life.” She hummed softly to herself, thinking it over. “That’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve been in Hell.”

Bellamy didn’t say anything, and they both turned and watched as Cain disappeared over the top of a sand dune and vanished from sight.

* * *

_“Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, _  
_may be the thing that keeps you going, _  
_ but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, _  
_ that it's making a dare in the world and when has _  
_the world ever let us win a dare?”_  
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go 

** _3004BC - the remains of Mesopotamia_ **

“So that’s a rainbow?” She stared at the colourful thing arching across the sky. “I don’t like it.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s colourful.”

_“Excuse me?”_

“Well you’re not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, you know that, right?” He pointed out, urging another pair of mammals into the underbrush. He’d been doing that for half an hour - trying to make sure all the animals had somewhere dry to go - and she’d stumbled into him after subtly tempting Noah towards a bottle of wine, and making sure Ham saw it. There wasn’t exactly a lot of creativity in temptation when there were only a few people left in the world. Floods would do that.

“I like colours.” She said petulantly, kicking at a patch of mud and flecking the bottom of his pearly white robes with it. A small flicker of pride went through her at the sight. “I never said I didn’t like colours.”

“You’re in all black every time I see you. You even cover your eyes with those dark glasses. You’ve never been colourful.”

“Not true; sometimes my hair is red.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Well what about you?! The only thing I ever see you in is _white._ That’s not exactly bright and cheerful either.” She complained.

“The difference being that it’s a light colour.”

She sighed, waving a hand, and her robes turned navy blue. “See, colour.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes while Bellamy helped a rodent up a tree. She thought he might have forgotten the discussion after a while, but she had severely overestimated his ability to let things go, which he made very clear when he muttered, “Still dark though.”

Fuck.

She was in love with an Angel.

** **

* * *

_There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.  
_\- Socrates

** _399BC - Athens, before the trial of Socrates_ **

Clarke had been pleading with him for hours. “I’m telling you, I can smuggle you out of the city. You don’t have to die for this.”

Socrates only smiled wanly. “If a man is not willing to die for his ideals then those ideals would have no meaning. Athens has closed its mind to me, Clarke, but my mind will remain open until the end.”

She groaned loudly. “That’s all well and good, but being dead doesn’t exactly help spread those ideals. Crito bribed the guards - all you have to do is walk out of here. Please, just open the door and run.”

He tutted and reached for her hand, patting it in comfort. A clear sign that he wasn’t planning to move from that spot; he was resolute. “You know better than most what it means to stick to your principles.”

“Yeah, and I was banished from Heaven, so I’m the poster child for reasons _not to do that.”_

“Clarke. You know why I must do this. If I do not die for my principles, what do I live for?”

Someone opened the door, and if they were surprised to find a woman sitting in the cell with him, they didn’t show it, just hauled Socrates to his feet and took him out to his trial. She followed them, watching the whole thing from a distance, watching as her friend prepared to give his life, facing death with a kind of serenity that was rarely seen.

“This is bullshit.” She muttered to herself, sniffling.

“Yeah, it is.” Bellamy materialised next to her, his arm ending up draped over her shoulder in comfort.

“This is your lot, you know. It wasn’t me.” She said angrily.

He just gripped her a little tighter. “It wasn’t me either. I promise.”

“He’s a good man.” Despite trying to hold it together, the last word caught in her throat, and she swallowed in an attempt to keep the tears down. “All he ever wanted to do was make the world good with him.”

“I know.” Bellamy said darkly.

Socrates drank the concoction of hemlock, smiling over at his friends, and past them to where Clarke and Bellamy were standing. He nodded to them, a silent goodbye, before he lay down on the ground and directed his last words at his closest friend.

“Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.”

Crito laughed. And then he wept, with a great number of people in Athens joining him in his grief, and a demon, standing high on a hill with an angel at her side, cried with them.

* * *

_“I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.”_  
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

** _5BC - Bethlehem_ **

Clarke was sitting next to Bellamy at four in the morning, outside a barn. She was still wearing her sunglasses. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken them off. Thankfully, Bellamy didn’t mention it, even if she did catch him looking at them with his brows furrowed in thought every now and then.

She’d spent the afternoon making sure all the inns were full, and he’d been guiding shepherds and kings towards the town with a well-placed star, only to get there and discover that Mary and Joseph were stuck without anywhere to sleep. He made sure one of the innkeepers mentioned his barn, and now there they were, just sitting - waiting.

“Haven’t seen you in a while.” He said, an air of forced casualness in his voice, deliberately not looking at her.

She shrugged. “I’ve been busy. This isn’t the only corner of the world, you know. You should get out more.”

“I get out plenty, Princess.”

“Oh!” She remembered suddenly. “I’m not Wanheda anymore.” She’d forgotten to mention it the last time she’d seen him, but then again, she’d been a little preoccupied.

He turned to look at her then, surprised. “Really? What did you change it to?”

“Clarke.” She said, smiling. “It’s Latin, sort of.”

“Which meaning do you prefer: scribe or scholar?”

“Whichever you like. As long as I’m not anything to do with death anymore.”

His eyes went soft, and he bumped his shoulder against hers. “You just helped bring Christ into the world. That’s _life,_ Princess.”

“To be fair, that was an accident - I was trying to hinder you.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He said, more forcefully, and she had the feeling that he would have argued with her about the semantics for decades. A part of her wished he would. “You did a good thing.”

“Gross.” She deadpanned, but she didn’t move away, and in fact, didn’t move from that spot for the rest of the night.

* * *

_“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”_  
― Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

** _1614AD - London, a pub somewhere on the South Bank_ **

William was writing in the corner, while Clarke and Bellamy cheers’d their cups of ale and caught each other up on their latest travels. It had been a few decades since they’d seen each other last - both busy on assignments from their respective offices.

“How’s Galileo?”

“Oh excellent!” Bellamy grinned. “He’s discovered Jupiter’s moons.”

Clarke sipped her ale. “I made those.”

“Made what?”

“Jupiter’s moons.” At his look of wonder, she suddenly felt self-conscious. “It was a long time ago, it doesn’t matter now anyway.”

His eyes were big and brown and serious and she could feel the kindness rolling off him in waves, which made her feel faintly sick. Or maybe that was what love felt like. The longer he stared at her, the worse it got, and then he said, very softly, very earnestly, “Of course it matters.”

And she felt it like a punch to the chest.

“Bellamy. Just drop it.” She muttered.

He looked put out, but he obeyed her wishes. “I heard you spent some time in the Netherlands; how’s William of Orange?”

“Assassinated for crimes against Catholicism. Speaking of which, how did restoring Roman Catholicism in Britain go?” She quipped, and he glared at her. “Alright, alright - how did you spend the Renaissance?”

“Dropped in on various artists, performed a few minor miracles, the usual. You?”

“Mostly hung out with Da Vinci.”

“Oh, what was Da Vinci like?”

“Uh, pretty grumpy, very gay. We got on like a house on fire. What was Michelangelo like?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Grumpy and gay.”

“Just how I like ‘em.” She grinned over at him and he snorted, almost choking on his drink.

When he got his breath back, he glanced over her shoulder at the man in the corner. “You seen any of his plays?”

“All of them.” She swigged her drink again. “His histories aren’t very accurate though. Especially Macbeth. I mean, witches aside, I met Macbeth once and he was nothing like the guy in the play.”

“I love that they’re fiction.” Bellamy said wistfully. “It’s kinda great to see events that we actually attended portrayed as more interesting than they were. Most of this job is really dull, you know.”

“Liar.”

“It is!”

“You love being here.” She accused. “You love the people and the music and the food - there’s nothing dull about it.”

He shrugged. “True. But my job? The places that Upstairs sends me? I promise, those are as dull as they come. I missed _Da Vinci,_ Clarke.”

“But you met Michelangelo, so you can’t complain.”

“Yeah? Watch me.”

It was her turn to choke on a laugh, prompting a very irate Shakespeare to glare over at them and tell them to please _“take your flirting, or arguing, or whatever folly it is, to a more distant table, if you intend to keep on with such violent outbursts.”_ Bellamy, suitably chastised and more than a little embarrassed, apologised to him profusely, but Clarke just offered to buy the man a drink and his anger was quickly forgotten. Soon, the three of them were swapping stories and drinking, and the next morning, when Shakespeare woke up, he’d have a vague memory of the strange couple he met, and some new story ideas swimming around his ale-soaked brain.

* * *

_“I talk to God but the sky is empty.”_  
― Sylvia Plath

** _1929AD - Wall Street, October 29th_ **

It was chaos.

People were rioting, bankers were panicking, and rich people were feeling just a little exposed. She relished it - that slight lick of fear up a millionaire’s spine when faced with the reality that currency was a construct. But she didn’t enjoy the suffering it caused to the people without money, the people who deserved better.

Still, at least they were rioting.

She walked through the hullaballoo and made her way towards Trinity Church. She was almost at the door when something caught her elbow.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She halted in her tracks, turning to look at Bellamy’s worried face. “Going to church.”

“You can’t do that.” He said urgently.

“You know the ‘demon’s bursting into flames’ thing is a myth, right? It’s uncomfortable, but I’ll live.”

“No, I mean, you really can’t do that. Archangel Gabriel is in there.” He winced. “He came down for a report just as Wall Street crashed and now he’s waiting for me to explain to him why I’m not doing my job properly.”

He was still holding her arm. She had a feeling he was trying to comfort himself, to become steel and marble, ready to face his boss.

She found herself becoming irate on his behalf. “You’ve got the entire world to cover, how can he expect you to deal with a few measly stock points when you’re busy with the Vatican and Trotsky and-”

-much as I appreciate your support, Princess, I really need you to go. If he sees you here, we’re both screwed.” He said, and she realised what he was actually afraid of - not of his boss’s wrath, but of something happening that forced them apart. Her heart started beating out a waltz in her chest and she had to remind herself that he didn’t love her like that, that he just thought of her as a friend.

“Okay, Angel.” She murmured, stepping back from the church door. His fingers slipped off her elbow, and she tried not to miss the contact. “See you around.”

The last thing she saw before she rounded the corner was Bellamy’s dejected face, and she had a feeling she’d missed something important. She was so distracted by his presence that she completely forgot what she’d even been going into the church for, and she wouldn’t remember for a number of months.

* * *

_“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”_  
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

** _1946AD - Dresden_ **

She walked down what remained of the street, trying to remember what the city used to look like, before the war and the destruction.

Humans had a habit of taking what little beauty they created in the world and crushing it to dust.

She wondered why God saw them as her most perfect creation - she wondered things all the time, it was why she’d fallen, for wondering things that got her into trouble - when so much of what they did was destroy. A mother was taking her child to school, holding him close as she walked, and Clarke shook her head at the absurdity of it; less than a year ago, this city had been reduced to ash, and yet the people carried on. Maybe that was why God loved them so much.

“Demon Girl?” A familiar voice asked.

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Clarke?” She turned to find Cain leaning against a wall, lighting a cigarette.

“A few more.” He retorted, winking, and took a long drag, offering it to her. She shook her head, and he stuck it between his teeth again. “I like the new glasses.”

She shrugged. “The old ones were getting dated.”

“They’ll come back around - fashion always does.” He said, exhaling smoke towards the sky.

“Those’ll kill you, y’know.” She teased.

“Ha ha, very funny.” He said sarcastically, blowing out another puff of smoke, more aggressively. “Sure you don’t want some?”

She sighed, but she stopped and leaned next to him anyway, accepting the cigarette from his extended hand. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him since that fateful day back in 4002BC. She bumped into him occasionally, all over the place, and he was always just as much of a cocky shit as the first time she met him. “How’s eternal life?”

“I don’t know, how’s yours?”

“I don’t know.” She answered honestly, staring around at the city. “I’m a demon. I’m not supposed to care about this. I’m supposed to _cause_ things like this. But I just… is this what She created you for? To kill and war and destroy?”

He kicked at a piece of cobble. “I stopped asking what She wants a long time ago. Sometime around the time I changed my name. God-given just wasn’t suiting me anymore - just like you.”

“Maybe I should change it back.” She muttered, taking a drag of the cigarette. “Maybe that word is more suited to me than I thought.”

“You didn’t do this, Clarke.”

“Didn’t I?” She shook her head in disgust at herself. “Someone did. If you can’t place the blame on a demon, who else is at fault, Murphy?”

“The people who pulled the trigger. The people who sat in an office hundreds of miles away and told those people to pull the trigger. The _people.”_

“But why did She create them to be _this?”_

“Maybe it’s all some cruel joke that we’re not getting.” Murphy suggested, flashing a wry smile. “Anyway, why are you in town, did you hear that Angel boy was here or something?”

That was, in fact, exactly why she was there.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.” He regarded her for a moment. “You should just tell him how you feel.”

“Don’t be stupid, Murphy. He’s an Angel.”

“So?”

“So I can’t feel that way towards him.” She felt an ache in her chest as she forced herself to acknowledge the truth of that statement. She’d been doing that a lot lately - reminding herself that loving Bellamy was one sin she wasn’t allowed to partake in. It hurt. It hurt worse than falling had. But she’d never admit that to anyone, and especially not to him.

“You’ve been friends for thousands of years and they haven’t caught you yet - how could loving him make it worse?”

“Because if he ever, for a single second, reciprocated, it would ruin his life. He might fall, or he might never speak to me again, or a hundred other terrible options.”

“Or you might both be fine. You could buy a cottage in Italy somewhere, so he could be close to all that boring history shit that he likes.” He tilted his head. “Take it from me, Clarke, loving someone from afar doesn’t make it better. They still live their lives. They still die. They just do it without you.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but before she could, her Angel materialised in front of them.

“I thought I felt you in town.” He said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”

She hesitated.

“I invited her.” Murphy said, and you know what, she took back every negative thing she’d ever thought about him, Cain was her new favourite human. If he even counted as a human anymore, that is. “Thought we could catch up, reminisce about the good old days.”

“Good old days?” Bellamy asked, frowning between them.

“Clarke hasn’t told you about the time we spent with Lord Byron? Or that year we hung out with Oscar Wilde?”

At his inquisitive expression, Clarke shrugged an explanation. “I told you, I like them grumpy and gay.”

“Lord Byron wasn’t-”

“She means me.” Murphy deadpanned, snatching his cigarette back from her and taking one final pull before he dropped it, putting it out beneath his boot. “How’s the miracling, Angel?”

“Slow. The world needs a lot more miracles, these days.”

“You should be getting paid overtime.”

“We don’t get paid.”

“...You should be getting paid overtime.” He repeated, more forcefully, making Clarke laugh.

Bellamy smiled over at her, pleased more by her amusement than by the joke, and she felt her heart trying to dance again, but quickly forced it back into its usual two-step. By now, she was sure he had to know how she felt; she felt it so constantly, and so much, that it was a wonder the mortals didn’t feel it. But he never said anything. Maybe that was his way of letting her down gently.

Murphy glanced between them. “Well, I’ve gotta see a man about restoring the art museum, so I’ll catch you both later.”

He waved lazily and slunk off into the heart of the city.

“He’s taking his immortality well.” Bellamy remarked. She hummed agreement. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious. “So, you see him around a lot then?”

“Not as much as you, but yeah, I’d say so. We’re getting dangerously close to being friends at this point.”

A strange expression crossed his face, one she didn’t often see. She had most of his expressions mapped out by now, but every now and then there’d be a flicker of something that she couldn’t quite catch. It was always the same expression, always something similar to melancholy but not quite, and she still hadn’t worked out what it meant.

He didn’t address it though; he simply said, “Oh.”

Clarke nudged him back towards the main bit of road and they started walking together, side by side. “Uh. So I heard you were here looking for books?”

Bellamy had bought a bookshop in London sometime in the early 1800s, because his own personal collection was getting out of hand and he had nowhere to put them. He collected first editions of everything, and especially loved things of historical significance. The store itself almost never sold anything, and when it did, those books always mysteriously turned back up on the shelf within a week. Clarke didn’t mention it. Sometime in the 1890s, the shop had become so full that he opened another one in Washington, which was handy for Clarke when she wanted to visit America and didn’t feel like miracling herself somewhere to stay. Bellamy owned little apartments and things all over the world, but Clarke had never been very good at settling anywhere - the only thing she owned was a small cottage on one of the tiny islands off the coast of Scotland, somewhere no-one could bother her.

He smiled a little sheepishly in response. “Sort of. I’m actually here to help some of the bookshops that were destroyed last year rebuild their collections.”

“So you’re cheating and miracling the books to them?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You know damn well I’m not allowed to perform frivolous miracles.” He said sternly. “I’d get demoted.”

She waited.

He held the severe look for half a minute longer before he caved. “Yeah, I’ve been sneaking a few miracles in here and there, removing damage to some books and rebuilding shelves, it’s nothing big enough for anyone Upstairs to notice.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, I think it makes you infinitely cooler.” She said, prompting his nervous expression to fall into a small smile.

He ducked his head, always embarrassed by any kind of praise, and immediately changed the subject. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask but I haven’t had a chance - why were you trying to get into Trinity Church in 1929?”

Her heart dropped a little. “Uh. No reason, just… wanted to check it out.”

“Clarke.”

She sighed. “I wanted to steal some holy water while people were distracted by the stock crash.”

He froze. “You. You what?”

“I wanted-”

“-why in God’s name would you do that, Clarke, you’ll get yourself killed!” He actually looked angry with her, and she blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings with his sudden turnaround. At times like these, she was glad she wore sunglasses, because she really didn’t like the idea of facing him bare-eyed, exposed, when he was this emotional. It was already doing funny things to her chest.

“I was gonna be careful.” She promised. “I just wanted it for… insurance.”

_“Insurance?”_

“Look, if this,” she gestured between them, “ever gets discovered, your lot will give you a slap on the wrist, or maybe you’ll Fall. If Downstairs gets wind of our friendship, they’ll throw me in the darkest corner of Hell and torture me for the rest of eternity. All holy water can do is kill me, but they can make my existence into a constant cycle of agony. Between that and death, I pick death.”

He folded his arms, feet still planted firmly, unwilling to budge until he’d gotten his frustration across. “Clarke that’s insane. If it’s so dangerous to spend time with me, then you should _stop_ spending time with me, not buy a suicide pill!”

It was like all the oxygen went out of Dresden. Maybe it did. She had to check that she hadn’t accidentally sucked the air out of the city before she took another breath.

“Is that what you want?” She asked, quiet.

“Yes.” He snapped.

She took a step back. “Fine. Do what you want, Angel, I don’t need you.”

She glimpsed a flash of regret on his face for barely a second before she transfigured into a snake and disappeared into the rubble.

** **

* * *

_“You build up all these defenses,_  
_you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you,_  
_ then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person,_  
_ wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you._  
_ They didn't ask for it._  
_ They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you,_  
_ and then your life isn't your own anymore._  
_ Love takes hostages._  
_ It gets inside you._  
_ It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness,so simple a phrase like_  
_ 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter_  
_ working its way into your heart. It hurts._  
_ Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain._  
_ I hate love._”  
― Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones

** _1991AD - Los Angeles_ **

It had been a few decades or so since she’d last seen the angel - with the notable exception of a drunken meeting at Pride in the 70s that she didn't much care to remember - and she was coping just fine, thank you very much. After their fight, if it could be called that, she’d deliberately avoided him. Whenever she heard he was going to be somewhere, she would turn and run in the other direction, as far and as fast as she can. It was who she was - she would always be the person who ran. In her defence, Bellamy didn’t exactly try to catch her, so after a few years she decided he really was done with their friendship and pretended she’d never even met an Angel.

And now here he was, sitting in the passenger seat of her car.

“Bellamy? What are you doing here?” She asked, starting the engine but leaving the handbrake on so she could turn to look at him.

He pointedly wasn’t looking back at her, acting all broody and mysterious as he stared out the window. She tried very hard not to find it adorable, but honestly, she was a lost cause by now. If she was_ really_ honest with herself, she was a lost cause about six thousand years ago, but she didn’t want to think about that while he was literally right next to her.

He didn’t seem to notice the internal battle happening beside him, he just shrugged a shoulder and said, “I hear things.”

She made a face. “I’m sorry; you _hear_ things? What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It means that I heard about your plan.” The ‘plan’ he was referring to was Clarke’s decision to hire someone to sneak into a church and steal ten vials of holy water, which she had only thought of that morning, and only told one person - so she was already resolving to kill Cain - and she hadn’t even had a chance to put it into action yet. He frowned. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

It was her turn to shrug. “So?”

_“So?”_ He finally whipped around to look at her, flabbergasted. _“So?_ So you could _die,_ Clarke!”

“I’ll be discorporated, it’s not the same thing.”

“Yeah, if you get caught, maybe. But even if you succeed at stealing it, if you touch it, it’ll destroy you. Not discorporated – _gone.”_

“I’ll be careful. This really isn’t a big dea- why should you care?”

He fell silent. His eyes raked over her face and she felt too exposed, wished she had her sunglasses on, or something to hide behind. Maybe a small boulder. Or a small child. Or, probably more helpfully, a large child.

After a long moment, he slumped a little, and his expression shifted to something she didn’t really know what to do with, right before he pulled out a flask.

“Here.” He grumbled, handing it over. “Now you don’t need to stage a dangerous robbery and risk being sent back to Hell.”

“Is that–”

“–holy water. Yes.” He seemed sad, somehow. “Don’t thank me. I’m not doing this for that.”

“Bellamy, I…”

“Don’t. Just… don’t.” He said darkly.

She clutched it to her chest, held it like she wished she could hold his heart, and stared at him with wonder. The air in the car started to become thick with tension and gratitude and love and she felt ill again, but she didn’t care because her Angel was sitting in the passenger seat and he hadn’t moved yet.

“Does this mean you want to be friends again?” She asked tentatively.

“I never wanted to stop, Clarke. I just didn’t want you risking your life.”

“You’re worth it.” She said, biting her lip as if that could stop the words from being heard. His head whipped around, eyes wide and vulnerable, and she swallowed painfully. “You’re my best friend, Angel.”

For once, he was struck completely speechless.

They sat in silence for minutes or hours or possibly months, and still he didn’t say a word, just looked at her with that warm brown kindness she’d loved for 6000 years.

When he did speak, his voice was hoarse. “Yeah?”

She nodded and opened her mouth to say something, anything, and then her car radio crackled to life and Beelzebub used a rapper’s voice to talk to her.

“Wanheda, excellent work on the Warsaw Pact, we heard you were in Los Angeles, what are your demonic plans?”

She didn’t take her eyes off Bellamy while she spoke, completely making something up off the top of her head. “Uh, I was thinking of getting a singer to tear a photo of the pope on Saturday Night Live.”

“Perfect! Keep up the good work!”

The radio fizzled out.

Bellamy’s jaw twitched when he swallowed. “SNL is in New York.”

“They don’t know that, do they,” she pointed out, smiling hesitantly. “Want to get some food?”

He thought it over. “Maybe some other time.”

“I’ll pay.” She suggested - begged, really, which was incredibly undignified - putting the flask of holy water in the glove box.

“Some other time.” He said, and then he was gone, and she was left alone in her car, the air still thick with love and the taste of missing him, and she wondered if it would ever get easier to live with.

* * *

_“Don't Panic.”_  
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

** _2006AD - Vancouver_ **

It was cold and wet, just how she liked it. Her snake instincts tended to seek out warmth, but she’d always preferred the dreary climates. Perhaps because a certain Angel emanated warmth and whenever she was around him, the cold was a good excuse to stand closer, as if she couldn’t just miracle herself warm.

At the moment, however, Bellamy was somewhere in Egypt or Australia, or maybe China, she wasn’t sure, and she was sitting on a bench in a cemetery, letting the rain drench her.

Hastur and Ligur emerged from the mist, carrying something between them. Both of them looked miserable, which she would assume was because they hated mixing with the mortals, if she didn’t know that their faces always looked like that.

“Hastur.” She said in greeting. “Eaten any babies recently?”

“No.” She said, looking unimpressed, as per usual.

“Ligur, you made any rich, white men commit disgusting crimes this week?”

“Ten in the last two days.” He confirmed, grinning slimily.

She hated them both.

“What do you two want? Beelzebub just said be here at dusk, so, what is it?”

They glanced at each other and then thrust the basket they were carrying into her lap. She cracked it open, only to discover what appeared to be a human baby gurgling happily inside it.

“Uh, what the fuck?” She asked, mostly politely.

Hastur made a face like she’d just smelled something terrible. Or, again, maybe it was just her face. Clarke didn’t really care enough to check. “Due to your excellent work fermenting evil for the last 6000 years, Beelzebub is entrusting you to deliver the child of Satan and to watch over her growing up, to ensure she reaches the age of thirteen and ushers in the apocalypse, as is her rightful destiny.”

Oh, so nothing huge then.

She nodded. “Yep. Okay. Deliver the Antichrist to the right home, got it.”

“Not to a home, just to the nearest Satanic Nunnery.” Ligur said. “They’ll deposit her in the right place.”

“Right.” She said, peeking into the basket at the baby again.

The Antichrist was surprisingly adorable.

* * *

_“I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, _  
_or that any of us are entitled to better. But please,_  
_ isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones,_  
_ in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?”_  
― Richard Siken

** _2006 - Vancouver, a few hours later, in a closed down diner_ **

“Are you shitting me?!” Bellamy burst in.

“Language.” Murphy deadpanned. Clarke was sitting, cross-legged, on a table, staring at the basket, and Murphy was draped across the counter, counting ketchup packets for something to do.

“Fuck you.” Bellamy snapped in response, making Clarke snort. He rounded on her. “What?”

She waved a hand. “Nothing. Curse words suit you, Angel.”

It might have been her imagination, but it looked like he flushed, and he quickly glanced away, sharing some kind of meaningful glare with Murphy. She miracled herself a glass of whiskey and ignored them, scrolling through twitter while they had their wordless conversation.

“-larke? Clarke.”

She glanced up from the latest celebrity engagement announcement. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you called Murphy in?”

“You didn’t ask.” She pointed out, looking back to her phone.

He yanked it from her hand and held it out of reach. “You acquired the Antichrist and thought you’d call _Cain?_ I thought you were smarter than this.”

"I can hear you." Murphy said, not actually sounding that bothered. 

“Shame.” Clarke mumbled, more focussed on trying to snatch her phone back. He twisted out of her way and she grimaced. “You know, I think you’ve been spending too much time with me, Angel. You’ve picked up some nasty habits. Swearing, stealing, consorting with criminals, littering–”

“–I would never litter!” He was just frustrated enough for her to grab her phone from his hand, and she smiled softly at him as she pocketed it.

“I know. You’re too _nice_ for that.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re mocking me?”

“Because she definitely is,” Murphy said lazily, interrupting them. Clarke had honestly forgotten he was there. “Now, before you two flirt some more, can we work out what to do about the demon baby?”

They quietened, Clarke shooting an irritated look at Murphy and Bellamy checking on the baby, stroking her chubby little cheeks with a great deal of care and affection.

“This is the Antichrist? Are you sure?” He asked, still gazing at the little thing.

Clarke definitely shouldn’t be jealous of a baby.

“Yeah, she is. I’m supposed to drop her off with the Satanic Nuns so they can send her to a terrible family so she grows up to hate humanity, which means that on her thirteenth birthday, when she inherits her power, she can destroy the world.”

“So why are you sitting in an abandoned diner with the first murderer?”

“Because…” She faltered.

He turned to look at her, a wide smile spreading across his face as he realised what it meant. “Because you don’t want to.”

She ducked her head. “Shut up. Do you want the world to end? No more bookshops, no more history channel, no more food, no more-”

“-I’m not arguing with you.”

She wrung her hands together, nervousness trying to channel itself out through her palms. “You might, when you hear my plan.”

“Oh? What’s the plan?”

“Give her to a good family. Raise her right.” She pushed her glasses further along the bridge of her nose, instinctively putting her guard up. “You and I can watch over her, make sure she’s not too good or too evil; she can grow up a normal girl, with a normal life, and she can make her own choices. If, at the end of it all, she still wants to destroy everything, then at least we can say we tried.”

Murphy and Bellamy looked back at her, the former like she was crazy, and the latter like he was torn between panicking and giving her a hug.

Clarke scooped up the baby, bouncing her on her hip and delighting at the peals of giggles that came from the child. When she looked back at Bellamy, that indecipherable expression was on his face again, tempered with something like nervousness, as he watched her playing with the baby.

“Well?” She asked.

Bellamy didn’t answer, that look just kind of plastered over his features, like he was glitching.

“Angel, what do you say?”

Murphy clapped him on the shoulder, snapping him out of his stupor, and he shook his head a little, regaining his bearings.

“Okay.” He said, eyes serious and so full of heart she wanted to cry and kiss him and maybe punch him, just for good measure.

“Seriously?” Murphy asked, stealing the glass of whiskey Clarke had left on the table and downing the last of it. “Well, I guess if you’re both committed to this insanity, I’m in. I’m all in. This is gonna be fun.”

Clarke snorted. “Babysitting the Antichrist? What could go wrong?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, what do you think??? 
> 
> i hope y'all are enjoying it so far!!
> 
> am i insane for posting another wip? yes, obviously. 
> 
> you may have noticed I seriously cut down the amount of characters in this compared to the OG Good Omens, and that's mostly because I want this to be about Bellarke and their awkward slow burn romance with a few little appearances by side characters. Murphy as Cain is basically serving to replace both Newton and Shadwell, but an Anathema type may or may not turn up in Part 2. *eyes emoji* 
> 
> the next chapter is entirely from Bellamy's perspective, and mostly follows the next thirteen years, watching Madi grow up, with a few throwback sections to past times with Clarke in history. 
> 
> your kudos and comments make me happier than Angel Bellamy in a bookshop with the History Channel playing! <3


	2. Some Of Us Are Looking At The Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bellamy, the first angel on earth, falls in love with a demon, and doesn't really know what to do with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN UPDATE???
> 
> THIS QUICKLY???
> 
> IN THIS ECONOMY???
> 
> that's right bitches. anyway here's some Quality Angel!Bellamy Content™, i hope you like it <3
> 
> for reference, here are the angels:  
Gabriel -Pike  
Michael - Octavia  
Sandalphon - Titus  
Uriel - ALIE
> 
> plus, Murphy as Cain, Madi as the Antichrist, etc.

_“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”  
_― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

** _2020AD - Polis Air Base, The End Times_ **

Falling in love with the demon had happened quite by accident and he’d really managed to trip ass backwards into it, but now here they were, standing in the middle of the desert and waiting for the world to end. Loving was just far too easy for an angel – they were beings of love, after all. Yet it somehow took Bellamy nearly 6000 years to realise that he didn’t just love Clarke in the way he loved everyone, but in the romantic way that Greek philosophers described. The two-halves-of-a-whole kind.

By the time he realised, it struck him that he’d _actually_ been in love with Clarke for quite some time – almost since their very first acquaintance, when they became friends – but he’d somehow managed to miss it. Oh well, it happened. He got busy. The world was due to end. He loved his best friend. They both seemed equally catastrophic, somehow.

He gripped the flaming sword tighter and looked over at her, standing determinedly in the face of their imminent demise.

They were so screwed.

“Clarke, if you don’t think of something, I’ll…” He trailed off, unsure, and she stared back at him, eyes huge and practically glowing blue. “I’ll never speak to you again.”

The brief flash of horror that crossed her expression steeled his resolve, and then she was flicking her wrists and the world felt funny, like it was being dragged through porridge or something, and then it shuddered to a stop. Or rather, time did.

She glared over at him, eyes fixated on his hair for some reason, and muttered, “Angels,” derisively, right before she dropped towards the floor.

He managed to catch her around the waist, holding her up, and he realised she was shaking slightly, all her energy spent on keeping the world frozen.

“Clarke? You alright?”

She leaned more heavily on him, nodding, and he knew he shouldn’t be enjoying their closeness so much, especially when they had Armageddon to worry about, but this was nice. It was more than nice.

He was in love with a demon and it was literally the end of days.

Fucking excellent.

* * *

_She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.”  
_― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

** _4004BC - roughly 6000 years earlier_ **

He was watching Adam and Eve running away, stumbling towards the future in that stilted way that humans would come to be known for, when a large black snake slithered up to his ankles. It had enormous blue-green eyes and red patterns along its sides, and he recognised it as a demon almost immediately.

It started shifting, moving upwards, and then a short, blonde woman was standing where the serpent had been, tilting her head at him in acknowledgement. “Angel.”

She was wearing all black, and there were red streaks in her hair. Even in a more humanoid form, her eyes were slitted like a snake’s, and they seemed too big somehow, but not in an unpleasant way. She didn’t look him in the eye, too busy frowning at his shoulder, for some reason.

He folded his arms in a way he hoped conveyed his displeasure. “So you’re the demon that showed them the tree.”

She only smirked at him, pulling an apple from thin air and tossing it between her hands; taunting him with what she’d just done. “You sound a lot less impressed than you should be. I just outwitted God.”

He tried not to react, turning back to watch the humans, but he was angry at her cavalier attitude to what she’d just done. She’d changed the course of history. Unless- “Unless She wanted it that way.”

She blinked, big and wide and blue. “What?”

Eve stumbled and Adam caught her, helping her up. They were moving forward, always forward, not looking back. “Maybe She wanted them to leave the Garden.”

The woman frowned, thinking it over, but she quickly shook her head. “She’d hardly let a demon get the credit for that, would She?”

He scrunched up his nose, trying not to admit that she was right. He could feel her gaze focussed in on him, and he tried to ignore it, watching the mortals, but after a while he became exasperated. “What?”

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?”

“Uh.” _Shit._

“I’m sure that the last time I saw you, you were holding a sword, fire and brimstone, that sort of thing.” She glanced around curiously, as if it would appear from the sand. “Where is it?”

He sighed in defeat. “I gave it to Eve.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Not Adam?”

“She’s pregnant, she needs the close protection - Adam can attack things with his whole body, she can’t. You’re not going to ask me why I gave them an angelic sword?”

“I was assuming She told you to. Are you telling me she didn’t? You chose to give away your angelic weapon?” She stepped closer to him and he wasn’t sure why, or why he didn’t mind, but he didn’t, and she did. “That’s a fall-able offence, you know.”

Judging by the look on her face, he hadn’t quite managed to keep his panic about that statement internal.

She reassured him, and then they were discussing philosophy and their purpose like they were old friends, like it was easy. He’d never talked about that sort of thing with anyone else, but she was eager to ask questions, happy to poke fun at him. It was strange, but he was almost _enjoying_ discussing moral relativity with this demon. She emanated a strange kind of power, the kind that could kill, but he sensed something softer beneath it, a heart that beat the way his did. Whether it was remnants of her ethereal being or something unique to her, he wasn’t sure, but he was fascinated.

She caught him staring at her. “What?”

He thought it over. “What’s your name?”

“Wanheda.”

“Doesn’t that mean-”

She looked sad. The big, old kind; the kind with permanence. “Princess of Death. Yeah. I don’t like to talk about it, and I don’t do that anymore anyway. I asked to be reassigned; that’s how I ended up here - they told me to just get up and stir up trouble. Indefinitely.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

She parroted the statement back at him, a question.

He shrugged. “Nothing, it’s just… I’m gonna be here indefinitely too. So I guess we’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other.”

She laughed, and it was a cheery, melodic sound, one he wanted to hear again. She started to slip back into snake form, that playful smile still on her lips. “Don’t count on it, Angel.”

He watched her slithering away, and for some reason was inclined to call out, “My name’s Bellamy, by the way.”

Her only response was an upward flick of her tail as she disappeared into the distance. He wasn’t sure what the gesture meant and he didn’t much mind - all he knew was that he wanted to talk to this demon again. And that terrified and amazed him in equal measure.

* * *

_“...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars, _  
_rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”_  
― Homer, The Iliad

** _1184BC - The Fall of Troy_ **

It was Odysseus’s idea.

Bellamy watched the destruction from a window, watched as the Greeks sprung from the enormous wooden horse and started attacking Troy from within its walls.

He wondered if he was impressed at their ingenuity or concerned at the Trojan’s stupidity, and he decided that it was probably safer to feel both at once.

He leaned out over the ledge and waved a hand, miracling as many civilians as he could away from the fighting.

He wanted to intervene, but it wasn’t his war.

God made it very clear that the Ancient Greeks made their own choices, independent of Her, so Bellamy was essentially sidelined for another couple of centuries, at least in Greece. He probably _could_ head south, but the weather was nice here, and he wasn’t going to let a decade-long war ruin that. Still, he was twiddling his fingers, trying desperately to refrain from diving in and helping.

Nothing could stop Clarke though - he could see her, fighting back to back with a Greek soldier one minute and high-fiving a Trojan the next. None of them seemed to mind that she switched sides faster than the guards let the gift horse in.

She was revelling in it, in the chaos of it all.

She was the eye of the storm.

It was mesmerising.

And he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Centuries later, when Homer wrote his Iliad, he wrote of the woman whose face launched a thousand ships, whose beauty started a war and defied the gods themselves, and Bellamy couldn’t help but think that Helen of Troy didn’t hold a candle to a fiery demon with eyes like a snake, darting through the streets and flicking a dagger deftly between her fingers.

* * *

_"We're not damaged goods, maybe we're just lonely people."  
_\- Orla Gartland

_ **487AD - Killeaney, Aran Mor, Ireland** _

Bellamy and Cain had an agreement to meet up once a century, every century. In theory, this would be the easiest way to keep in touch, but when Bellamy went traipsing across the entire planet only to find the man in a monastery on a little Irish island, it was more than a little frustrating.

“What are you even doing here, Cain?”

“Oh I changed it.”

“Changed what?”

“My name.”

He did a double take. “You can’t just change your name, Cain, it’s God given.”

“Which was exactly my problem with it, Angel Boy, get with the times.” He said, leaning back in his chair.

Bellamy sighed, throwing up a quick prayer to give himself strength in the face of Cain’s constant cocksuredness. “Fine. What did you change it to?”

“Murchadh.”

Bellamy blinked. “Sea Warrior?”

He shrugged, shifting a little uncomfortably. “It was the first thing that came to mind.”

“What?”

He groaned. “Look, I… I arrived here, looking for some peace and quiet, and I was living in this abandoned barn by the ocean, or at least I _thought_ it was abandoned - until a woman found me. She asked me who I was and what I was doing there, and I just… panicked.”

“You panicked? You’re the first murderer, you don’t _panic._ What really happened?”

“No, I’m serious. I- she- look, she was _kind_ to me, okay?” Murchadh squirmed a little in his seat. “People aren’t kind to me. It’s part of this stupid mark,” he waved his arm in Bellamy’s face, “and the weird vibe it gives off - no-one can kill me, but no-one wants to come near me either. The mark of the very first killer in history, it carries my history around, makes people wary, and I get it, but… she was _nice._ She offered to let me stay in her house. Offered me clothes, food, never asked for anything in return. And I wanted her to like me. I cared what she thought.”

“So you changed your name and stayed here?” Bellamy actually felt a little warmed by the story.

Murchadh made a face. “Don’t get all_ Sweet, Lovesick Angel_ on me, I’m not in the mood.”

He raised his hands in surrender, gesturing for him to continue.

“We lived together for twenty years.” A wistful expression crossed his face, softening his usually sharp features. “She was a good person.”

“Was?”

“She died, two years ago. Bolgach. It took her within weeks. She’s buried out there, in the monastic cemetery, and I visit her every day.”

Bellamy held back a wince. “I didn’t know that smallpox had made it up this far. If I’d have known-”

“-you would have done_ what_ exactly? She wasn’t a saint or a regent or a doctor. She was just an ordinary Irish woman, who showed kindness to a man who never deserved it. That’s hardly worth your superiors taking an interest.”

“I could have done something.” Bellamy said. “Whether Heaven wanted me to or not, I would have, Murchadh, I swear.”

The man regarded him, emotions flickering across his face one by one as he finally settled on a mixture of sadness and respect. “You’re not like the others, Bellamy. You’re interesting.”

“Angels were born to spread harmony and create miracles to make the world a better place. I’m only doing what I was born to do.”

“No. You’re not.” He flashed a meagre grin. “You’re one of a kind, Angel.”

If he was honest with himself, Bellamy wasn’t really sure how to feel about that.

Murchadh tossed him a roll of bread. “Now, how has your century been? What’s the blue-eyed demon been up to?”

* * *

_“Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, _  
_thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "I think maybe everybody falls,"_  
_ I say. "I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking."_  
  
_ I pull on her arms gently to make sure she's listening._  
  
_ "I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”_  
― Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

_ **1349AD - York, St Deny’s Church** _

“It’s getting worse.” Bellamy said, shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot.

“It’s a plague, it’ll do that.” Clarke said from where she was sitting cross-legged on his desk.

He set his jaw. “I could miracle it better.”

She levelled him with a hard stare which, with _her_ eyes - even behind sunglasses - was always alarming. “A miracle of that size would_ kill_ you, Bellamy.”

“But it would save all these people.” He gestured around them, at the sick, unconscious bodies in the church, at the nurses who attended to them. “It would save millions.”

“And who are you to decide that they need saving?” She asked, tilting her head at him, like a challenge. “What if, in the throes, you save someone who’s supposed to die, someone evil, someone who, if they lived, would destroy everything. What would that make you? Would you be responsible for his actions?”

He opened his mouth to retort, only to find he didn’t have one. Clarke had a habit of doing that - saying something that completely halted him in his tracks - and half the time she wasn’t even trying. She just surprised him.

Constantly.

When he didn’t respond immediately, her gaze drifted past him, to the pile of bodies by the back door, the bodies that couldn’t be taken to the cemetery because there was no longer any room. Her eyes softened and dimmed behind the glasses, and she pressed her lips together the way she always did when she was suppressing her emotions.

She _cared_ so much, and she never wanted anyone to know.

He’d seen her, performing demonic miracles to help people, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that neither Heaven nor Hell could see. And he was sure that she’d seen him using his celestial abilities for more petty tasks, but she never called him out on it.

They were friends, of course they were, but more than that, they trusted each other. Enough not to ask the question they knew would cause the other unnecessary strife.

“I could burn it.” She suggested solemnly.

“Burn what?”

“The church.” She said, and tiny flames began licking around her fingers. “Anywhere that the sickness has completely taken over. I could stop it from spreading any further.”

“That’s murder, Clarke.”

“Demon.” She pointed out, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was still looking at the pile of bodies. “And these people are screwed anyway. It’s the Black Plague - it’s a death sentence, it doesn’t matter if they’ll still be holding on for a few more days, they’re already dead.”

“Not all of them.”

Her eyes snapped to him, vacant. “It would be enough. The few that would have survived against the thousands, the millions, that could die - it’s worth it.”

He reached for the hand that was closest to him, covering it with both of his own. The fire barely had a chance to singe his skin before she extinguished it, but her hand was still unnaturally warm. “Clarke. You know you can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“No. You can’t.”

Her gaze dropped to their hands, and he could see her resolve wavering. Her face crumpled a little, revealing her true emotions, just for a moment. Her heart was breaking for these people, and she just wanted to end their suffering; he could feel it, churning beneath the surface of her skin, like water at boiling point, and he knew exactly how that felt.

“I can’t just do nothing, Bellamy.” She whispered.

“We’re not doing nothing. We’re doing the best we can, okay?” He squeezed her fingers reassuringly.

She withdrew her hand. “It’s not good enough.”

“It’s all we have.”

She started walking away, frustration rolling off her in burning hot waves. _“It’s not good enough.”_

He didn’t know where she was going or what she was planning to do, but he knew that whatever it was, it was bad. She would get herself discorporated, or destroyed, or worse, and he couldn’t let that happen.

“So let me miracle it all gone.” He said. She froze. He waited, playing his last card and hoping to God it worked.

He knew it had when she stepped back towards him just so she could jab him in the chest with her finger, rather angrily. “Not a chance in Heaven, Angel.”

He relaxed, catching her finger. “Then we do what we can, and we pray that it’s enough.”

Clarke slumped in defeat and her eyes drifted towards the pile of bodies again. She rolled up her sleeves and snapped her fingers, and the bodies disappeared. He didn’t ask where they went. Her jaw was set in determination, and she crossed her arms, surveying the church again. “I don’t pray, Angel.”

Once again, he was rendered completely speechless.

He covered it by busying himself helping the nurses, and only occasionally glancing over at Clarke as she tended to the sick and sneakily replenished supplies with a demonic snap of her fingers.

He would never get used to the myriad of feelings that swirled around his chest whenever he looked at that demon.

* * *

_“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, _  
_which laid the foundation. It is too long ago._  
_ I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”_  
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

_ **1817AD - Bel Ami Books, London** _

The store opening had gone _exceedingly_ well. He’d sold all the books he intended to, and kept all the editions he didn’t. Even Murphy had come, swanning in just before close to desecrate a few Keats volumes.

Now, Bellamy sat behind the counter, pretending to count the days takings even though he knew exactly how much money he’d earned, and also didn’t care about, just so that he could imagine he wasn’t upset about a certain demon not turning up.

The bell above the door jingled as someone entered the shop.

“Sorry, we’re actually, closed, I thought I locked that-” He said, looking up.

“You did.” Clarke was standing in his bookshop, and her hair was pulled into one of those intricate regency twisted buns, and she was wearing a navy blue dress, a package tucked under her arm, and she was smiling at him like nothing he’d ever seen. “I broke in.”

“You wasted a miracle on unlocking a door?” He asked, trying to speak over the frantic pounding of his heart against his ribs. He shouldn’t be this excited to see her, he really shouldn’t.

Her smile turned a tad wicked. “Nah, I just picked the lock.”

“Of course you did.” And that should _not_ have made him more attracted to her, holy shit.

“Anyway, I… I’m sorry I missed it, I was busy in Germany watching Karl Drais ride his dandy horse.”

He blinked. “Uh. Is that a euphemism of some kind?”

She laughed and moved further into the shop, until she was leaning over the counter, forearms resting on his book of transactions. “No, but I kinda wish it was. No, it’s a type of vehicle - he’s going to France to patent it next year - a velocipede.”

“Huh.” He said, not really sure how to respond, considering his brain was still catching up with_ ‘ride his dandy horse’. _ “You don’t have to apologise for missing it, honestly I didn’t expect you to come anyway.”

“What?”

“No, wait, that’s not what I meant, I just mean that I wouldn’t have been upset if you hadn’t showed.” The hurt on her face only deepened, and he wanted to bury his face in his hands or maybe for the ground to swallow him whole. “Not, not like that, I just mean…”

She stared at him expectantly.

“I’m really glad you’re here, Princess.” He admitted. “I missed you.”

Mirth sparkled in her eyes, but she didn’t tease him like he thought she might. Instead, she pulled the package from under her arm and slid it across the counter.

He inspected it, deducing pretty quickly that it was a book.

“Well? Open it!” She said, grinning at him. “It’s your present.”

“You didn’t need to get me a present.”

“Well I did, so open it.”

He pulled at the string around the brown paper and it fell away, along with the wrapping, to reveal not one but_ two _books.

_The Watsons,_ and _Sanditon,_ by Jane Austen, were sitting on his shop counter, and he felt his heart just stop beating completely.

“But… but these are…”

“Her unfinished novels.” She said excitedly, watching him carefully for his reaction. “I went to visit her before she died, sat by her bed for a few weeks. She was just as wonderful as you said, and I wish I’d met her sooner, I have a feeling we would have caused a lot of trouble - the good kind. We started talking about you, about how you helped her brothers in the militia, and she said she would love for her books to be sold by you in London. I promised that you would, and then I was talking about how I wished I could give you some kind of gift to celebrate the opening and she said she wished she could see the shop. And then she… she told me where these were. She made me swear that these two would never be sold, that they were for my eyes only.”

“But these _are_ finished.” He said, flicking through them. “I thought Jane only wrote five chapters of The Watsons before she abandoned it?”

“She picked it up again a few months ago, when she realised she was dying. She didn’t want to leave them without endings.”

“But…”

“They’re the only two copies in existence - to everybody else, they’ll be unfinished forever, but you get to hold them, to keep watch over them for her. It’s what she would have wanted.”

“But…”

A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “Do you not like them?”

She looked so worried that she’d messed up, so concerned that he didn’t like them, meanwhile he was trying to comprehend the enormity of the gesture she’d just made, and why it was making tears appear in the corners of his eyes and his cheeks warm as he looked at her.

And _holy fucking fuck, he was in love with a demon._

His heart started beating, a few minutes late, but there it was, tripping over itself in his chest again.

“Clarke, I…” He took a shaky breath. “I love them.”

“Really?” She looked relieved, smile creeping back.

“This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“That can’t possibly be true.” She said, and she was right there, he could just lean forward and kiss her now.

He could do it.

He could.

_He couldn’t do it._

Instead, he smirked. “Face it, Princess; you’re _nice.”_

“How dare you.” She said, but she didn’t look altogether that upset, and the bookshop seemed to be humming in her presence. It liked her; or maybe it just sensed Bellamy’s love. Either way, despite how fantastically the launch of the store had gone, he was at his happiest with one single customer, leaning over his counter and making the shelves sing ancient ballads to themselves.

* * *

_“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.”  
_― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

_ **1929AD - Trinity Church, Wall Street, October 29th** _

He had finally successfully convinced Clarke to leave, and he watched her go with some level of sadness, missing her already.

He’d been struggling with it for the last century; every time they bumped into each other, or met up for lunch, or did one another a favour, he felt like he couldn’t function. Like the love he felt would swallow him whole.

She must know, by now, how he felt, but she never acted any different than normal. Even for a being of love, he emanated an abnormally high amount of it whenever she was around, and it was like she took it with her wherever she went. Like she carried his heart, without even knowing it, and he’d given it up willingly. To a _demon._

It was pathetic, really.

He slipped into the church the second she rounded the corner.

“Ah, Bellamy, you’re late.” Gabriel said, clapping his hands together. “No matter. How is it out there?”

“Chaotic. I got sidetracked helping people fi-”

“-Now, I assume you know why I’ve called this meeting?” Gabriel stood in the centre of the church, and Michael, Sandalphon and Uriel stood behind him; the most intimidating celestial entourage of all time.

“Uh. No, sir?”

He tutted. “You’ve been slacking, Bellamy.”

Michael was staring at him harder than the others, and he felt uncomfortable. She was the youngest of the original angels, and he had always felt like something of an older brother to her, but it was evident that her days of feeling the same familial connection were over. She was the military angel now - the Angel of Death. She was the celestial inverse of Wanheda; but where Clarke had shirked her violent destiny, Michael had leaned into it.

“I’m sorry?” He asked, distracted.

“In the last century, you’ve been late to update us, missed certain important historical events, and have even been seen with the First Murderer.”

“That’s by God’s direction, sir, I’m to check in with him once a century.” That wasn’t strictly true - it was his idea - but he figured God wouldn’t mind.

“That may be, but how do you explain the other mistakes?”

_I’m in love with a demon and it’s distracting._

_I’m head over heels for an occult being and it’s hard to concentrate._

_I love Clarke._

“The population has skyrocketed, and there are a lot more fires to put out now than there ever were before.” He bluffed. “It’s been a lot for me to handle on my own.”

“Ah, I see - you need help.”

“No!” It burst from his lips, a lot louder than he intended, and Michael raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him, interested. He ducked his head apologetically. “No, I’ve, uh, I’ve got the hang of it now, it just took me a while.”

“A hundred years is a hell of a bell curve.” Uriel said, looking sceptical.

“And if you sent another angel down here now, it would take them _five hundred_ to adjust to the mortal world,” he said, trying to conceal his panic. “So I’d say my results are just fine.”

Gabriel regarded him for a long, excruciating moment.

“Fine. But your reports will be on time from now on, Bellamy, or we’ll send Sandalphon to watch over you. Understood?”

He nodded, ready to thank them profusely, but he didn’t get a chance before they blinked out of the church and back up to Heaven.

He stumbled to the nearest pew and collapsed against it, breathing slowly. He didn’t really need to breathe all that often, but he found that in times like this, it helped to calm him down.

That had been far too close a call.

* * *

_Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you_  
_ as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;_  
_ That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend_  
_ your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new._  
_ I, like an usurp'd town to another due,_  
_ labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;_  
_ Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,_  
_ but is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue._  
_ Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,_  
_ but am betroth'd unto your enemy;_  
_ Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,_  
_ take me to you, imprison me, for I,_  
_ except you enthrall me, never shall be free,_  
_ nor ever chaste, except you ravish me._  
\- John Donne, Batter my heart, three-person'd God

_ **1945AD - Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico, July 16th** _

Clarke was in there, he knew it.

He was standing outside the base camp for the test, in the early hours of the morning, trying to decide what to do.

His superiors had told him it was necessary to let this take its course, to let the humans sow the seeds of their own destruction, but he wasn’t so sure. This felt so inhumane, so harsh, that he was beginning to question Heaven’s motives.

And he knew Clarke was in there.

They’d had lunch a few times since the twenties, and bumped into each other while on assignments, but once the war started, they’d both become more than a little swamped. But even then, she still managed to surprise him.

She’d saved St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz, when he was too busy in France trying to help the allies; made sure that the bomb that would have burned it to the ground rolled safely off the roof and onto the Stone Gallery. When he asked her about it, she only shrugged, like it was nothing.

And he’d seen her on the battlefield; while he was leading good men towards salvation, she was nudging bad men towards the front lines. Anyone who attacked the innocent or raised a hand to a woman, anyone who pulled the trigger after the fight was over, anyone who pushed their fellow infantrymen in front of them to save themselves, would mysteriously end up leading the pack into battle. It became something of a myth, among the soldiers - the vengeful spirit who would punish any blackhearted man.

Despite her methods, she was doing _good._

Now, she was inside, watching over all the luminaries of the Manhattan Project, waiting for them to create destruction in a bottle.

He couldn’t pin her down, no matter how hard he tried - good or evil, right or wrong, kind or not - and he loved her anyway.

“Hovering doesn’t suit you, Angel.”

He turned to see Clarke leaning in a doorway, jacket pulled tight around her shoulders despite the summer heat.

“I don’t know what to do.” He admitted, glancing back towards the window where he knew Oppenheimer sat, perusing over calculations and ideas with his physicists in their final moments before the detonation.

“You don’t have any orders?” She asked, eyebrow raised.

He paced closer, always closer. “I’ve been ordered not to interfere. But I… Clarke, this is…”

“I know.” She said darkly. She held his gaze. “I know, but this is all we have.”

He cursed his own stupid mouth. “That’s not fair.”

“What, using your own words against you?” She reached for his hand. “It’s actually very fair. Watch, I’ll do it again: Bellamy, _this is all we have.”_

He glared at her, but there was no real annoyance in it.

“I don’t know what’s right and wrong anymore.” He said, clutching at her fingers like a lifeline. “In the last couple of millenium the lines have just blurred more and more, and I don’t know what to do.”

She stepped closer, just as an enormous explosion rocked the very ground they stood on and light filled the sky, nearly blinding. Her other hand came up to grab his arm, steadying herself, and she scrunched up her nose - slowing time down enough to get her bearings back.

They looked over at the detonation, at the slowly rising mushroom cloud, at the devastation that human ingenuity could cause.

“They did it.” She whispered, as the smoke billowed into the air.

He shook his head. “They call it the_ Trinity Test,_ Clarke. As if this could be anything holy.”

“It’s from a poem.” She said, still standing so close to him. “John Donne.”

He scowled, uncaring, and she snapped her fingers, making time return to normal again, and a shockwave blasted them, sending them back a few steps. The cloud spread faster, larger, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

_“That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”_ Clarke recited.

“I know the poem, Princess.” He snarked. He found he couldn’t find it within himself to do anything else. He was overflowing with despair. “What do we do?”

He wasn’t really asking, didn’t really expect an answer, but she gave him one anyway. She moved closer until she was hugging him from the side, holding him tightly around the waist. “We do the best we can.”

* * *

_“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, _  
_like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”_  
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

_ **1946AD - Dresden** _

He put his foot in his mouth.

Again.

It was incredibly frustrating, how she affected him.

He was usually so good at talking, at speeches, at convincing people and influencing people and debating people - sometimes he didn’t even have to use a miracle to nudge the humans in the right direction - but Clarke always threw a spanner into his works.

It started when he asked her why she was at the church in 1929 and she responded by trying to brush him off. He should have just let her, but he foolishly persevered.

“Clarke.”

She sighed. “I wanted to steal some holy water while people were distracted by the stock crash.”

He froze, heart kicking up a few notches. “You. You what?”

“I wanted-”

“-why in God’s name would you do that, Clarke, you’ll get yourself killed!” He exploded at her, unable to contain his concern, and she almost looked alarmed at his outburst.

“I was gonna be careful. I just wanted it for… insurance.”

He frowned, unsure. “Insurance?”

“Look, if this,” she gestured between them, “ever gets discovered, your lot will give you a slap on the wrist, or maybe you’ll Fall. If Downstairs gets wind of our friendship, they’ll throw me in the darkest corner of Hell and torture me for the rest of eternity. All holy water can do is kill me, but they can make my existence into a constant cycle of agony. Between that and death, I pick death.”

He folded his arms, feet still planted firmly, unwilling to budge. “Clarke that’s _insane._ If it’s so dangerous to spend time with me, then you should _stop_ spending time with me, not buy a suicide pill!”

The air shifted, like the atmosphere had changed, and everything got a few degrees colder.

He wanted to take it back.

But he didn’t.

“Is that what you want?” She asked, quiet.

The quiet hurt more than if she’d yelled.

“Yes.” He snapped, instead of saying what he wanted to say, which was that he was hopelessly in love with her and that if anything happened to her he would lose his Goddamn mind.

She took a step back. “Fine. Do what you want, Angel, I don’t need you.” Then, with one final glare, she returned to snake form.

He watched her slither through the rubble until she disappeared completely, and he felt his heart ache in his chest the further away she got.

He’d really done it this time.

* * *

_“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”_  
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

_ _

_ **1978AD - San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, June 25th** _

Bellamy watched the parade moving through the streets, at the rainbow flag being flown for the first time, at the joy on people’s faces, and his heart warmed for them all. He was keeping to the outskirts, mostly there to turn away any anti-lgbt protesters who might dare to show their faces, but every now and then someone would slap a sticker on his jacket or offer him something edible from a colourful basket, and he felt connected to them all.

It was so full of _love._ And Angels, created of love, could only love it back.

Which is why he was almost surprised to see Clarke in the crowds, cheering and stomping her feet and singing, a flag draped about her shoulders like a cape.

_Almost._

Because, really, of _course_ Clarke was there. The demon who’d given Adam and Eve the gift of knowledge and free will, who would defend the downtrodden just because she could. A demon on the side of whoever needed it. If being gay was a sin, then she would celebrate it louder and harder than anyone else, and he felt a stupidly wide smile settling on his face as he watched her go by, planting a messy kiss on a shy girl’s cheek mid-song. She looked happy, at home, surrounded by all that love, where any other demon would have done anything to shake it off.

He glimpsed Cain in the crowd too, kissing a grinning man and holding another girl’s hand.

He wondered if this was what all those philosophers meant by “Heaven on Earth” because honestly, this was the closest thing he could think of.

Out of nowhere, like a tear in the sky, Bellamy felt _sadness._ Overwhelming, heart-wrenching melancholy that stopped him in his tracks and made him look around frantically, searching for the source of the pain. Pride was always a little tainted in the pain of years past, of the suffering people endured, but not like that, _never_ like that. That was too much grief for one person to bear. It made the air sharp and scratched the back of his throat, and he wanted to wrap it up and miracle it away.

And then, just as quickly as it had come, it passed.

He couldn’t help looking around at all the smiling faces, wondering which of them had felt such agony just moments before. Whoever it was must have moved past where he was standing, so he stepped off the street and into the procession, planning to search for them.

But the parade kept moving forward and he got swept up in it, engaged in an enthralling discussion with a Lesbian Poetry Society, accepting their invitation to accompany them back to their bookshop for a drink. When he followed the owner in, people were already sitting in there, couples curled up on armchairs, people perched on the edges of the coffee table, all trying to make room. The voices were quiet but excitable, and he caught the edges of conversations as she led him through, until he was standing in the middle of the shop with a cup of coffee in his hand and a plate of biscuits being held out to him.

It felt comfortable, welcoming, and he settled into it. His own bookshop hadn’t felt this warm since his fight with Clarke, like it knew how much he was hurting without her.

“Fancy seeing you here.” A familiar voice said, slurring a little.

He glanced around, only to see Clarke draping herself across the back of a couch, arm dangling down and playing with the fingers of one of the girls who was sitting on it. Her hair was dangling over the edge, streaks of colour in it, and there were bright stickers and paint all over her. The flag-cape was still tied around her neck, swathing her in an ethereal glow. Her glasses were askew but she didn’t look like she cared, and she was definitely more than a little bit drunk. It was more snakelike than she’d looked in a long time, and he moved closer, leaning on the bookshelf opposite her.

She must have been drunk, because if she was sober, she would never have let him get that close.

“It’s a bookshop, Princess.”

She grinned at him, harsher than she used to; a little bit mean and all teeth. “Yes it is. And you’re a nerd. I should have known.”

He laughed, catching her gaze and holding it.

He missed her so much. He wanted to tell her that he was wrong, that he desperately wished he could take his words back. He wanted to be her friend again. He _wanted._ It was so easy to forget that the world kept turning when he tripped into her eyes like that. It wasn’t until the owner of the store - Niylah, he was pretty sure her name was - offered him the plate of cookies again, that he snapped back to the real world, accepting one with a smile.

“What about you, what are you doing here?” He asked; meaning of course, how did she end up in this _shop,_ but she only relaxed further against the top of the couch, gesturing lazily around at the people.

“Fight the power, Bellamy.” She said, and she was covered in rainbows and _glowing_ like anything, blue-green eyes bigger and brighter than he’d ever seen them.

“Which power?” He asked, amused.

“Any power. Any and all power that seeks to oppress the little guy.” She said it like it was obvious, like she was annoyed he didn’t already know, and it _was_ obvious, and God, Bellamy loved her.

His rebellious demon, who fell not because she was jealous of God’s favourite creation, but because she thought they deserved better. His demon who bore the weight of humanity’s sins so they didn’t have to. His demon who hated rainbows until they became a symbol of Pride.

His demon, but only because he loved her, not because he owned her; Clarke was unstoppable, ineffable, intangible - she could never be owned by anyone, and he would never presume to try.

_His_ demon, whom he loved.

He opened his mouth to retort, to keep the conversation going, but a couple stumbled in the door, giggling, and one of the women on the coffee table pointed at them, and then towards the street they’d just come in from. “Excuse me, you don’t belong here.”

The girl faltered. “What?”

“This is an lgbt space today, of all days.”

“We… we _are.”_ She looked confused, and a little hurt, and she stepped back into her boyfriend’s arms.

He smiled nervously at them. “We’re both bi.”

Most of the people in the shop were happy and welcoming enough - or at least high enough - to nod along, beckoning them further into the store, but a few of the women perched on the coffee table continued to scoff and mutter amongst themselves.

Clarke was on her feet and halfway across the room in the time it took for Bellamy to bite his cookie.

He watched as she hauled one of the women, presumably the ringleader, to her feet. “Out.”

“Excuse me?” The woman asked, affronted.

“Intolerance isn’t welcome here.”

“I’m not being intolerant. I’m gay, and I want a space for other gay people - that’s not too much to ask.”

“It is when you gatekeep how gay someone is allowed to be to enter your space, you whiny fuck.” Clarke hissed, and Bellamy could see scales beginning to rise up her forearms.

The woman scoffed again, rolling her eyes in a deliberate display of indifference. “What, like you own Pride?”

“I do, as it happens.” She snarled, “And you don’t get to look down your nose at anyone. Not today. Not here. This is _Pride,_ it’s not Lesbians R Us. You don’t get to judge whether or not someone is gay enough for you, and if you do, I’ll judge you to be too much of a _dick_ to be here. Got it?”

The woman looked sullen, but she nodded, and that seemed to be good enough for Clarke, who put her down. Bellamy tilted his head at her as she returned to her spot on the spine of the couch, draping herself somehow in exactly the same relaxed position she’d been in before. But he could see it now - the tension in her frame, the way her eyes drifted around the room in a way that looked aimless but actually landed on every person. She was making sure everyone felt comfortable, everyone was included.

Niylah bustled past, her tray of food almost empty, and Clarke snapped her fingers, replenishing the tray. Niylah barely reacted, and Bellamy got the feeling that Clarke had probably done stuff like that in front of her before.

He wasn’t jealous.

Of their friendship or… anything else.

He _wasn’t._

* * *

_“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest_  
_ where a heart would fit perfectly_  
_ and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –_  
_ well then, game over.”_  
― Richard Siken

_ **1991AD - Los Angeles** _

He ended up caving and giving her the holy water anyway.

He couldn’t help it - he just _missed her_ too much.

And the look of awe and appreciation on her face as she held the flask was almost enough to assuage his misgivings about it. _Almost._

“Does this mean you want to be friends again?”

It occurred to him that she didn’t know just how hard this had been for him, how much it had hurt to watch her from afar, to stay away just to keep her safe. “I never wanted to stop, Clarke. I just didn’t want you risking your life.”

“You’re worth it.” She said. His head whipped around, staring at her in shock and trying not to let his gaze drop to where she was biting her lip anxiously. “You’re my best friend, Angel.”

Yet again, he was struck completely speechless, but this time he didn’t have something to cover it with, so they simply sat there in silence, staring at each other, as love oozed from his pores and filled up the car, enveloping them both.

When he did speak, his voice was hoarse. “Yeah?”

She nodded and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the radio crackled to life and Ice T’s voice was being used to channel Beelzebub’s call. “Wanheda, excellent work on the Warsaw Pact, we heard you were in Los Angeles, what are your demonic plans?”

She didn’t take her eyes off Bellamy while she spoke, and he refused to move. “Uh, I was thinking of getting a singer to tear a photo of the pope on Saturday Night Live.”

“Perfect! Keep up the good work!”

The radio fizzled out.

Bellamy set his jaw, swallowing. “SNL is in New York.”

“They don’t know that, do they.” She smiled hesitantly. “Want to get some food?”

Bellamy wanted that more than anything in the world, but that call on the radio was already too close for comfort, and he found himself retreating instead. “Maybe some other time.”

“I’ll pay.” She put the flask in the glove compartment without even looking, eyes still locked on his.

“Some other time.” He promised, and miracled himself back to his bookstore in London, to try and remember how to breathe when there was so much love in his lungs.

His shop started humming again, for the first time since 1946.

“Traitor.” he mumbled.

The bookstore only hummed louder.

* * *

_“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. _  
_Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. _  
_Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. _  
_Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”_  
― Aldous Huxley, Island

_ **2006AD - Vancouver, a small house in an inconsequential suburb** _

“Are you sure about this?” He asked over her shoulder.

Clarke just made a dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat and pressed the doorbell again.

He had miracled the basket that contained the Antichrist into a more modern baby carrier - really, how did any celestial or demonic creature cope with being on Earth when they were so many centuries behind - and the two of them were standing on the stoop of a rather normal looking home.

Murphy had called the residents ahead of time, and then he’d arranged a meeting with a real estate agent to buy the _miraculously_ newly vacated house next door.

A woman answered the doorbell, smiling cheerfully at them. “Hello! Are you the people from the adoption agency?”

“We are.” Clarke said, shaking her hand. “I’m Clarke and this is Bellamy - you’re Mrs Griffin?”

“Please, call me Annie. David is in the living room, please come on in.” She said, leading them down the hallway to where an equally joyous man was settled on the couch.

“Is this the baby girl?” David asked, nervous, but clearly ecstatic. 

He was a perfectly ordinary man, and she was a perfectly ordinary woman, and they were a perfectly respectable couple. 

“It is.” Clarke gestured for Bellamy to place the carrier down beside the man. “And we think you’re going to be the perfect fit.”

* * *

_“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. _  
_No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”_  
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

_ **2012AD - Vancouver, The Griffin Residence** _

For six years, things had gone well.

Murphy bought the house next door, in order to keep a closer eye on the Antichrist as she grew up, able to call Clarke or Bellamy if anything happened.

They had to go about their usual jobs, occasionally doing miracles for one another if they were available, and checking in on the Griffins every few months.

They called her Madi.

She was a little terror of a child, but no more than any other toddler, and once she reached about five, she calmed down.

They were doing so _well._

They were going to pull it off.

And then Bellamy got the call.

The Griffins had been heading out to the mountains to go camping, but they barely got to the edge of town before a car ran a red light, ploughing into the car. Annie and David had died on impact, but Madi was - somewhat miraculously - unscathed.

Bellamy rushed to the hospital to pick her up, only to discover that she’d already been collected by a ‘family member’ wearing sunglasses, despite it being nighttime. It was pretty easy to figure out who.

He miracled himself into the house the second he heard, only to find Clarke was already there, the sleeping child cuddled to her chest.

“Clarke _Griffin,_ really?” He asked, refusing to sit, even when she offered.

“Well, I needed to pick her up from the hospital, they wouldn’t let me do it if I wasn’t family.”

“So you’re what, her cousin?”

“Aunt.”

“Clarke-”

“-look, I know this is crazy-”

“-it’s more than crazy! You can’t just _adopt_ the Antichrist, Clarke!”

“Why not?” There was defiance in her gaze.

“Because she’s the _Antichrist.”_

“She’s a little girl, who’s just lost both of her parents, and she deserves to be taken care of just as much as any other mortal girl.” Clarke clutched her a little closer protectively.

Bellamy finally gave in and collapsed on the couch next to her. He was exhausted. “What’s the point of having all this power if we can’t stop one measly car accident?”

“It was random chance, Angel, we couldn’t have predicted it.”

“Well that’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“You can’t adopt her.”

She bit her lip. “I already have.”

_“What.” _His head jerked up from his hands so he could glare at her.

“Murphy’s actually out at the adoption agency now, doing an interview as my reference, to prove I can be a responsible guardian.”

Bellamy dropped his head into his hands, trying to deal with the utter ridiculousness of that entire sentence. “You realise how insane that sounds, right?”

“I know, but listen - this could work! I’ll adopt her and we’ll move down to Washington, near your bookshop. That way, you can keep an eye on her too, and it’s less travel because you’d be visiting the shop anyway. I considered the London one, but I have a strong suspicion that Murphy was Jack The Ripper, so it’s probably not a good idea for him to stay there.”

“You’re not funny.” He said, despite the smile trying to force its way into his cheeks.

“Then stop laughing.” She elbowed him, jostling Madi, who snuggled closer in her sleep. Clarke glanced down at the child, genuine, earnest compassion in her eyes. “C’mon, Bellamy, we can do this.”

He wanted to say no, but looking between the two of them, he just couldn’t bring himself to. “Fine. What’s Murphy gonna do?”

“He owns real estate all over, same as you, I’m sure he’s got plenty of places in Washington - maybe he can live in the same building as us or something, a casual acquaintance.”

“He doesn’t want out?” Bellamy asked, semi-surprised.

Clarke grinned. “Actually, I think he’s grown quite attached to the little Antichrist.”

Bellamy snorted, gesturing at her. “He’s clearly not the only one.”

* * *

_“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”  
_― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

** _2016AD - Beast and Beauty Books, Washington_ **

Madi was lying on the couch, her legs propped up on the arm, playing Go Fish with Murphy, who was draped just as ridiculously - if not more so - across an armchair. She was winning, and Murphy was a sore loser.

Clarke had dropped her off on the way to ‘work’ which is what she called it to Madi whenever she needed to go out and do something demonic. Luckily, Madi was the kind of kid who didn’t question why her adoptive mother’s job had her leaving at any and all hours of the day.

Bellamy had been watching them from the counter, intermittently serving customers and filing books.

He made them hot chocolate, and a coffee for himself, and he was mid-sip when Madi piped up with;

“Why aren’t you and Clarke married?”

He choked on his coffee.

Murphy cackled with laughter. “Oh, kid, I’ve been asking that for _years.”_

“Shut up, Murphy.” He glared, getting his breath back, and smiled placatingly at Madi. “What do you mean, kiddo?”

Madi frowned, deep in thought, and sat up, leaning over the arm of the chair where her legs had just been so she could address him properly. “Well, Clarke has enough books already, plus she never buys anything in here, but we come in all the time and all she does is make googly eyes at you while you make heart eyes at her. It’s gross. But usually when couples are gross like that, they’re married.”

“We’re not a couple.”

Murphy’s grin was insufferable. “Yes you are.”

“Can it.” He snapped at the man, who raised his hands in a mocking surrender, winking at him. Angels definitely shouldn’t punch people. Even if they deserved it. Bellamy folded his arms to avoid swinging one. “Madi, we’re not a couple, we’re just really good friends. We’ve known each other for a long time-”

“-and you love each other.”

He spluttered. “Well, yeah, of course, of course we do, but… it’s complicated.”

She looked over at him, wide-eyed, the question already hanging in the air.

“Look, we come from very different backgrounds, okay? My… _family_ wouldn’t be too pleased if they found out we were even friends, let alone anything more, and her family is even _worse.”_

“Debatable.” Murphy deadpanned.

“Oh, I get it!” Madi said, slapping the chair. “You’re Romeo and Juliet!”

Bellamy made a face. “How many times do I have to tell you that that isn’t a romance. It’s a _tragedy_. It’s the opposite of a reasonable love story and Shakespeare never intended it that way, trust me, _I know._ Besides, me and Clarke are clearly Much Ado-”

He caught Murphy’s blatant smirk behind his mug.

“-much too busy to even think about anything like that.”

_“Nice save.”_

“Murphy I can send you to the middle of the Sahara Desert with a snap of my fingers.” Bellamy reminded him.

“Yeah, but you won’t.”

Bellamy was ready to do it even though Madi would see it, just to prove his point and teach Murphy a lesson, when the door jingled and Clarke strode in, moving immediately over to hug the ten-year-old. “How’s the game going?”

“I’m wiping the floor with him.” She stage-whispered.

“That’s my girl.” Clarke beamed, kissing the top of her head, and Bellamy could have swooned at the domesticity of it all. He was definitely too far gone for her, this was getting stupid now. Madi returned to the Go Fish and Clarke somehow ended up at his side behind the counter, leaning very close to him, forearms nearly touching on the wood. “She behave?”

“She always does.” He bumped shoulders with her. “You’re doing a good job, you know.”

Clarke looked over at him, a soft smile on her lips. “Thanks, Angel.”

“Now we just have to hope that this was all worth it, and that her 13th birthday doesn’t usher in the end of the world.” He said lightly.

Her gaze drifted back to the pair arguing over cards, and she hummed, contemplative. “Even if it does… this was worth it. Don’t you think?”

He watched the light hitting her golden hair and the blue-green of her eyes behind the sunglasses, and he couldn’t even remember the question. “Yeah, Princess. Definitely.”

* * *

_“This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.”  
_― Richard Siken, Crush

_ **2019AD - the night before Madi’s 13th birthday** _

Bellamy was sitting on the couch in Clarke’s apartment, while Clarke paced up and down in front of him, practically vibrating with anxious energy.

It was a minute to midnight.

“Maybe we did enough.” Bellamy suggested.

“Maybe I screwed it up.” Clarke countered.

He leaned forward, catching her hands on the next pass, halting her in front of him. “Not possible, Princess.”

She had that little crease in her brow that she always did when she was worried, and she wasn’t wearing her sunglasses, which were somewhere on the nightstand in her bedroom. She was so panicked that she hadn’t even thought to put them on when she called Bellamy asking him to come over for the moment of truth. He could see every bit of emotion flickering through those eyes, and when he squeezed her fingers, he felt a tinge of that soul-crushing sadness she always kept beneath the surface. The sadness that had almost bowled him over at Pride forty years ago.

“What if-”

_“Not. Possible.”_ He repeated, trying to get through to her just how much he meant it, and she swayed forward a little, like she needed to be closer, needed to be comforted, but was unwilling to ask.

She glanced at the clock behind him. “Ten seconds.”

They held their breaths, completely silent, both staring at Madi’s bedroom door, behind which she lay sleeping, blissfully unaware of who she was.

“Five.” Clarke hissed.

Midnight ticked over.

Thirty more seconds passed.

A minute.

They looked at each other, relief beginning to creep across their features, and Bellamy was going to tell her, he was ready, he’d been ready for years, but he was really going to tell her how he felt this time. He could do this-

Then, the ground shook violently beneath their feet, and light started glowing underneath the crack in Madi’s door.

_“Shit.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so what do you think?!??!
> 
> Your kudos and especially your comments make me happier than Clarke when she visits Bellamy's bookshop, they absolutely make my day. 
> 
> **Coming soon, Part 3:** ARMAGEDDON STRIKES!!!!!! (but mostly it's soft blarke and the end of the world is just kind of a backdrop? like, it's happening, but more importantly, there's some quality Jane-Austen-Regency-Style Eye Contact going on)


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